Jul 13, 2008

Salam kenalan (Glad to make your acquaintance)...

Apa kabar? Kenken kabare? 안녕하세요. 잘 지내세요?

Hi, my name's Ed, and I'm currently a grad student of linguistics based in San Diego (at the moment). I was born and raised here, so naturally I'm a native English speaker, but my parents came from the Philippines, so I also grew up hearing Tagalog and a little bit of Ilokano (my father's language). However, I'm not able to speak them at this point. I've been interested in learning different languages, particularly those that are off the beaten track. Instead of joining my fellow junior high and high school students in their Spanish classes, I took French. And I studied Japanese a couple years before that (that was the first foreign language I studied). I've also managed to study Korean for about a year.

Learning languages is not my only passion, however. For over 15 years, I've been studying, performing, and teaching Balinese and Central Javanese music and dance, studying with many renowned teachers both here in the US and in Indonesia. This, of course, naturally progressed into an interest in learning the languages associated with these performing art traditions. You can see some of my performances here. And you can see one of the groups I've recently performed with here.

Over the years, I've become fluent in Indonesian, and I've been doing a lot of research on Balinese, so most of my posts will be on these two languages. My hope for this blog is to provide some useful and/or interesting tidbits of knowledge I've gained from learning both Indonesian and Balinese (along with the occasional posts about the other languages I've studied) and to be able to share them with a larger audience.

Let me close by saying:

Inggih, ngampurayang titiang duaning makeh iwang titiang. Mogi-mogi ida dane sareng sami sida dados ledang kemanten sareng pikolih niki.

Ya, tolong ampuni saya karena kesalahan saya banyak. Semoga Anda kalian bisa menjadi puas dengan akibat ini.

[Yes, please forgive me for making a number of mistakes. I hope that you are all satisfied with the results.]

Sampai jumpa lagi! (Until we meet again!)

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome Ed! ^^
I've never heard indonesian before...
HEY! If you want to start learning Tagalog again, I'll totally practice with you. I want to learn it as well.

Anyway, 웰콤!!

Theresa said...

Hello Ed! Nice to have you with us. We don't use Bahasa Indonesia but we use alot of Bahasa Malayu in Singapore. :) They're somewhat alike I guess.

Selamat datang! That's welcome in Malayu. Looking forward to your posts!

Unknown said...

안녕하세요 ^^ Ed 씨, 블로그에 합류하신 것을 축하드려요!

Welcome aboard! ^_^!

요로시꾸 오네가이시마스!

Ed said...

Trims, semua! (Thanks y'all!)

Ed said...

Theresa-

Yes, Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu are quite similar in many respects, but historically they came from different sources. Even today, I have some difficulty speaking with orang yg berbahasa Melayu, sebabnya perbedaan aja [those who speak Malay, due to just differences].

james said...

hi ed. this seemed like an obvious question to me and i'd love for you to address it: Why the lack of interest (seemingly) in either of your parent's mother tongue?

Ed said...

James,

It's not for a lack of interest, for sure - it's a bit more complicated than that.

Actually it's a bit of a sore spot for me - my parents (long before I was born) emigrated to the US during a time when bilingualism was not at all encouraged (late 1960s) - my oldest sister's elementary school teacher told my parents to stop speaking to my siblings in their native Philippine languages as she believed it would be an impediment on their acquisition of English (which we know now is complete nonsense). So, we grew up not knowing how to speak Tagalog (or any other Philippine language, for that matter). I can understand most of what's being said, and I can speak a little, but I'm still a beginner.

And the grammars of those languages, IMO, are much more challenging than Indonesian (with the aspectual marking, partial reduplication, and "focus" marking, all of which are minimalized in Indonesian).

And since I do traditional Indonesian performing arts, it's simply a natural progression.

Nick said...

Hello, I was born in the Philippines and lived there until I was 12, then moved to Australia, I can still speak Tagalog like a native speaker, although some Filipino's think I have some sort of weird accent...

Anyway, if anyone wants to learn Tagalog I'm glad to be your teacher!

Nick said...

To Ed:

By the way, I'm having a hard time thinking of what to take for my Master's Degree... I really want to take Linguistics, but I have no idea what kind of jobs are out there for that degree (aside from teaching, or getting a PHD etc...) Since you took linguistics, I'm hoping to get advice from you. Thanks!

Ed said...

Nicholas,

If I were you, if you're just planning on getting your MA, then I would suggest getting a degree in applied (rather than "theoretical") linguistics. That way, you can easily use that degree to teach language classes.